Soft nose cast bullets

[bigbrowndog]

I just found an article by BTB owner talking about annealing his bullets, the noses above the crimp groove.  I like the idea and am wondering if anyone has tried this, and can share info on it??

is it worth doing?
Is the terminal performance on medium game better than a normal hard cast bullet?
how difficult is it to recognize the color shift when the nose becomes soft?

thanks
Trapr

[leftysixgun]

How do you anneal just the nose? I have heard of casting a soft nose with pure lead them filling the rest of the cavity with something harder.
Im tuning in.....

[bigbrowndog]

Set the bullet in a shallow cake pan with water covering the base up to the crimp groove, and heat with a torch.

Here is the article, 




>> Soft Nosed Beartooth Bullets? :: By Marshall Stanton on 2000-08-15
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Beartooth Bullets are heat treated to attain our BHN 21 hardness. Such being the case, they can also be annealed to reduce their hardness. For a soft-nosed bullet that will expand all the way down to 750 fps try this.

Stand a bullet in a shallow pan such as a cake pan or pie plate, then fill the pan with water to a point that the water level is even with the crimp groove. Uniformly heat the nose of the bullet with a propane torch, using a moderate flame, until there a subtle color change which takes place just before the bullet slumps and melts. This color change is subtle, and you will probably ruin a few bullets before you get the hang of things, but after closely observing, you will quickly recognize the color change when it takes place. At the instant of the color change, remove the flame of the torch from the bullet's nose and allow it to cool. When cooled, you will have a bullet with a nose being BHN 11, and everything below water line will remain at the BHN 21, just like you receive them from us.

A bullet treated this way will have a soft nose which will expand all the way down to 750 fps, and yet will stop expanding when it deforms down to the crimp groove, as the alloy is harder there. The performance is similar to some of the partitioned expanding jacketed bullets that have been on the market for years. The beautiful part of this system is that you can work up loads with the standard hard bullets, then by simply annealing the nose have an expanding bullet without changing any your developed loading data, as the hard shank of the bullet in contact with the bore will still perform like our standard bullets. These annealed bullets will shoot to the same point of impact and develop the same pressures and velocities as untreated.

Be aware that this process will only work if the bullets are heat treated to harden them and have an antimony content of less than three percent. Beartooth Bullets meet this criteria and respond wonderfully to this treatment.

::Comment On This Article/View Replies
Trapr

[leftysixgun]

Covering the bullet to the crimp groove crossed my mind but seemed to easy.
As far as my alloy is concerned, I dont think this will work since I dont heat treat mine.

[jsh]

I have cast some soft nose. Ran across a bunch of round ball molds for cheap some years back.
Cast up at a fast pace and get mold to temp where it frost. Single cavities work good here.
Have a small ladle with one of your dead soft round balls of proper size/weight setting on your alloy in pot so it is melted. Usually have a torch running to heat it up a bit more. Dump in mold and quickly pour your harder alloy on top.

It takes a bit of practice to get these to come out perfect. No it's not fast. For a cast hunting bullet a man only needs a hundred or so to last a life time.

Did this for 35 and 45 rifle bullets. Accuracy was the same as standard alloy and did not have the nose shear off. Expansion was as good as any jacketed and penetration looked to drive straight. Longer skinny bullets will bend if you get to much soft alloy in the nose.
Got the itch to give this a try on the solid nose Miha mold for the 480.
That big of a hole who needs expansion though.
Jeff

[bigbrowndog]

Jsh, I agree that starting with a big hole kinda negates needing expansion, but!! After thinking about guys on here using HP's and Seyfeid writing about soft nosed performance on Medium game, it got me to thinking that for lighter boned stuff, deer and antelope particularly some expansion might be nice.
Since it appears that none of the cast bullet suppliers offers HP's, in the calibers over 45, that a soft nose might be the easiest way to get some expansion. Especially since I don't cast, and have to purchase whatever I want.

Trapr